1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to electronic circuits, and more specifically, to a system and method for communicating between multiple voltage tiers.
2. Related Art
Reducing power consumption in integrated circuits has become a high priority. One way power is saved in logic circuits is to use multiple voltage tiers to “stack” logic elements between power supply voltage rails. This allows a current used to perform one logic operation to be reused, or recycled, to perform additional logic operations. However, as transistor sizes are reduced, requiring lower power supply voltages, system noise becomes a larger percentage of the power supply voltage. In this case, the use of multiple voltage tiers becomes even more difficult. Also, it may be necessary for circuits of the multiple voltage tiers to be able to communicate with each other. One or more level shifters can be used to level shift a signal from one voltage tier to another, however, a level shifter can generally only translate between adjacent voltage tiers, requiring the use of multiple level shifters when there are more than two voltage tiers.
Therefore, what is needed is a system that solves the above problems.